


Not a Single Punch

by TheSovereigntyofReality



Series: Transcendent Souls [12]
Category: Biker Mice From Mars, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergence - Iron Man 3, F/M, MILD - Freeform, Not Steve Friendly, Team Tony, x-over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-01 19:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20373802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSovereigntyofReality/pseuds/TheSovereigntyofReality
Summary: Tony Stark once saved the world without knowing it.And without throwing a single punch.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer: If you recognise it from somewhere else, it isn't mine.**

When his own flames suddenly turned on Killian, Tony knew something weird was up.

When the man with faded red hair walked into view, he drew all of their attention. ‘All of this, just because these people said “no” to you? If you’d have gained your powers like us, they’d have been gone in a heartbeat.’

Killian snarled and fired a blast of fire – or rather, tried to. It ended up flaring back over him and engulfed his whole body. Tony let out a low whistle as he watched. Killian screamed as the fire consumed him. Tony quickly glanced over and saw a young woman with long brown hair cutting the bonds on Pepper.

A little bit of a blur after that. They clearly knew what they were doing and they worked fast. The brunette, it turned out, was an old friend of Pepper’s from her childhood hometown. Sharee Pertinicle was the daughter of the guy who’d initially put a good word in for Pep and got her into Yale University. She also had powers of her own.

The only ones Tony saw then and there though were what she called the Mystic Arts, ‘for simplicity’s sake.’ That included gold-coloured bonds conjured out of thin air, and the ability to create portals. She used that for the third guy.

He walked in, knelt down by the tied-up and cussing Killian, and took a hold on the back of his neck. The nut-job’s eyes went wide and he make a choked sound. The glowing embers of his pyrokinetic powers drifted up and faded away. When the guy stepped back, he nodded to the other two.

‘What’d you bastards do to me?’ Killian demanded.

‘I took your powers away,’ the third guy said in a generalised American accent. ‘And don’t think you’re getting them back.’

‘No.’ Sharee walked over and grabbed him by the collar, dragging him over to a support beam and creating another golden rope to tie him to that. ‘You’re going into a straight-jacket in a padded room.’ He started screaming at her, so she picked up a rock and shoved it in his mouth. Then she walked over and folded her arms.

‘How long have you been able to do that?’ Pepper asked from under his arm. The third guy had already removed the powers Killian had forced upon her, as per her request, and Tony had given her his jacket.

Rather than answer directly, Sharee said, ‘Any regular guy on the street can learn the Mystic Arts if they can find someone willing to train them. Some people are more inclined to it than others, but it’s not exclusive.’ She nodded her head at Killian. ‘That’s actually pretty elementary.’

‘Willing to train them?’ That came from the President, who Rhodey was leading down.

Sharee frowned. ‘I opened a portal with this power to the other side of the world. It’s just as easy to open one to a black hole. You can understand why they’re very selective about who they train.’

The nightmare images Tony saw then didn’t bear reliving. He managed to reel it in though and heard the President give a, somewhat shaky, affirmative answer. Then he noticed Sharee start looking around. She was really having a good look around. She looked up, around corners and through the steel bars.

‘What are you looking for?’ Rhodey asked.

‘Cap,’ she said. ‘I’d think the President being kidnapped by a pyrokinetic nut-job would be a flame to the proverbial moth.’

Good point. Tony frowned and tapped his earpiece. ‘Hey, J. Where is Cap?’

‘One moment, sir,’ JARVIS said. After that moment passed, he reported back. ‘He doesn’t appear to be aware of the situation.’

‘How?’ the redhead asked. ‘It was splashed over every news station broadcasting.’

‘Is that a rhetorical question?’ Sharee cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘You know the answer.’

‘Unfortunately, I do: He obviously doesn’t pay any attention to the news.’ He frowned and looked at Tony. ‘Come to think of it, has he even undergone any integration programs.’

Tony shook his head. ‘Not to my knowledge. I tried to give him some help but he didn’t want to hear it.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ Sharee said. ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’s always been about exploiting rather than helping.’

‘What do you mean?’ President Ellis asked.

The three of them looked at each other.

‘Do you have it?’ the redhead asked.

‘I certainly do, Reuben.’ Sharee pulled off her backpack and opened the back pocket. She then extracted a thick file from inside. ‘These are the notes of one Otto Fabian. He was a citizen of Germany during World War II. During the War he infiltrated HYDRA – which, by the way, did not die with the Nazi Party because it was not a Nazi organisation. It was much, much older.’

President Ellis sat down and held his hand out. Sharee walked over and gave him the folder.

‘How did you get it?’ Ellis asked.

‘We found it in among grandma’s stuff when we were moving her,’ Sharee said. ‘Even she didn’t know it was there. My best guess is that he determined her the safest place to hide the data and snuck it in before he died.’

They were mostly silent after that. The President read through the file and the rest of them just sat down and waited for Secret Service to arrive and pick the President up. He found quite a few pieces of interest in among Fabian’s accumulated data. Most notably, just how deep HYDRA’s quiet infiltration of the system had gone.

So...when Secret Service did arrive, President Ellis handed the file back to Sharee for safe-keeping, and asked her to ensure there were electronic copies. He also had her and Reuben given a pass each to the White House. The other guy had already left via one of Sharee’s portals. Had somewhere to be, apparently.

Well, regardless, they had someone else dealing with it. As soon as Happy was up and about, they’d all head back to New York and work things out there.

But, one night, Sharee dropped by. She called first, and this was right after Fury had dropped by unannounced because apparently the President was giving every inch of the American Intelligence System a thorough going-over and Fury wanted Tony to fix it. Seeing as everything Tony saw indicated that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been infiltrated up to the teeth by HYDRA, Tony elected to ignore him. Regardless, Sharee’s common courtesy had brought Tony to the conclusion that if Sharee, who he hardly knew, could make a goddamn appointment, then Fury certainly could.

‘JARVIS,’ he said as he sat down at the systems while waiting for Sharee, ‘what say we make sure Fury and his cronies learn to enter someone’s house politely.’

‘Are you thinking of giving them a little zap every time they try to hack, sir?’ JARVIS asked.

‘How about we just send a virus through their systems?’

‘Very good, sir.’

He occupied himself with that until Sharee actually arrived. Then he went up to see what she wanted.

He had to give her this. She skipped the gristle and got straight down to the bone. ‘When I said a portal could be easily opened to a black hole you had a...stronger reaction than the others. In fact, I’m sure I saw the beginnings of a panic attack, but you reeled it back.’ She leaned forward in her seat. ‘The only conclusion I can draw is that you saw something when you went through that portal in New York.’

Slowly, Tony nodded.

Sharee huffed. ‘The fact of the matter is that there were two Infinity Stones involved in that mess. That makes it our business. We have our powers so that we can ensure the Infinity Stones don’t all fall into one set of hands.’

Tony looked at her. ‘That’s what Reuben meant when he said about losing the powers, isn’t it?’

‘Yup. So, I need to know what you saw.’

Though it hadn’t done him much good before, Tony explained what he’d seen. At the end, Sharee nodded and stood up.

‘I’m guessing no one else listened to you,’ she said. She didn’t even have to wait for his confirmation. ‘Well, I’ll be frank: they’re idiots. No war was ever won in a single battle.’ Sharee sighed. ‘If it helps, they’re not the only enhanced around – and I’m also very suspicious about why a couple of master assassins are on that team. There are plenty of other teams banging about the place. They’re just hiding from S.H.I.E.L.D. I’ll introduce you to some of them after me and the others deal with whoever was directing Loki.’

Tony nodded and watched her go.

For a moment, he mulled over what she’d said.

‘J?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Why are there a couple of master assassins on that team?’

JARVIS paused. ‘Do you really need me to answer that, sir?’

Tony paused and took a deep breath. ‘No.’

***

When Sharee returned she, again, called before she arrived.

Tony invited them to join them for dinner. Happy had just gotten out of the hospital and they’d filled him in. So he wanted to meet Sharee himself, especially considering she’d been then one to prompt Tony to get as much distance between himself and those “Avengers” who couldn’t even be bothered to show up and help him against pyrokinetics, yet seemed to believe he should be at their beck and call.

‘So, what’d you find?’ Rhodey asked.

‘Some guy called Thanos,’ Sharee said. ‘Was huge! Anyway, he was the last of the Titans, and he believed the resource crisis was what killed them. I don’t know what actually happened but he’s been going around culling half the population on various planets as some kind of twisted balance. Evidently, it occurred to him that he is mortal and he can’t do this to the whole universe one planet at a time, in his lifetime.’

Pepper looked alarmed. ‘And the Infinity Stones would have let him do this?’

‘Like that.’ Sharee clicked. ‘Literally.’

‘So, how’d you stop him?’ Tony asked.

‘Well, he was determined that he was saving the universe and he couldn’t be persuaded otherwise. Trust me, we debated with him for over two hours.’ Sharee grimaced. ‘We had to kill him in the end. Good thing we’re so O-P.’

‘So, you saved the world,’ Tony said. ‘That’s the end of that.’

Sharee waved a hand dismissively. ‘Please. Saving the world is something you do.’

‘What, the nuke?’ Tony shook his head. ‘That was just New York and I only did it once.’

‘I’m not talking about New York,’ Sharee said.

They all looked at her. ‘Huh?’

Sharee chuckled. ‘Oh, you didn’t know. Yeah, we considered that. But you did actually save the world back in the 90s.’

‘When?’ Tony asked.

Sharee sat back with her carton of Chinese food. ‘Do you remember a bunch of guys who smelled like rotting cheese and had cheese-based names. Romana Parmesana, Napoleon Brie, Lawrence Limburger – those guys?’

‘Yeah,’ Tony said. ‘They were buying up natural resources and vanishing them. Used extortion and if they wouldn’t be sold, they tended to just roll in and take them. All I did was point the authorities at them.’

‘Yeah, consistently,’ Sharee said. ‘And that’s what saved us.’

‘Once more with clarity?’ Rhodey asked.

‘Those guys were not human,’ Sharee explained. ‘They were disguised as humans, but they were not human. They were a race of bipedal lunged fish aliens called Plutarkians. Seems back on Plutark, they’ve wasted all of their own natural resources so they go around strip-mining the cosmos, and they take everything.’

‘Everything?’ Tony asked.

‘_Every_thing. Ever heard of Planet Alpha D-23? No, you have not, because the Plutarkians took off with it two centuries ago.’ Sharee scowled. ‘Venus is a good example of what happens that you actually can see. As far as I understand, they only realised what was happening in time to stop the Tub Transformer from taking their planet to become Plutark’s newest moon.’

‘So Venus used to be inhabited?’ Pepper asked.

‘Used to be, yes.’ Sharee frowned. ‘But because they were so late to the party, they couldn’t survive. These people were not capable of space-travel. Before the last of them died out, though, they transmitted a message; a warning about the Plutarkians. It was picked up either by a single Martian or a group of them.’

‘Martian?’ Rhodey asked.

‘Yeah. It went Venus, Mars, Earth.’ Sharee shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me why. The Martians actually started fighting back in time to save their planet. It launched a war with the Martians at a severe disadvantage, but it allowed them to actually save themselves.’

‘Disadvantage?’ Rhodey asked.

‘Turns out, the Martian government was fine destroying the planet if they got to line their pockets.’ Her voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘What a shocker, right?’

Tony snorted.

‘So, the government would have been subverting them,’ Rhodey said. ‘They would have had to act outside the law to get it done.’

‘Well, they did it anyway,’ Sharee said. ‘Anyway, by Tony here doing what he did he made this planet too expensive of an investment. Added in a few other factors and they withdrew. They even ended up defeated by the Martians – more specifically a small core group of them. So now the people are rebuilding.’ She chuckled. ‘It should be interesting to see how Earth responds to the cities being rebuilt.’

The mental image made Tony chuckle a bit – but only a bit because he could see himself having to step in here.

‘Why didn’t we notice the signs of life before?’ Happy asked.

‘That’s how bad they strip-mined the place,’ Sharee said. ‘And most of the Martians retreated to caves.’

‘Not to mention the size of the planet,’ Tony put in. ‘It may be smaller than Earth, but it’s still a pretty big planet. That would take years to mine – add in the Martians fighting back, and we don’t know when that started. And most of the early photos were poor and taken from a distance. If these guys were taking resources from the planet, and they’re fish, not to generalise but water was probably one of the first things to go.’

‘They certainly went after our water when they came here,’ Pepper pointed out.

‘Right.’ Tony nodded to her. ‘Exactly how much of their resources did they take off with?’

‘No idea.’

‘Enough to make the planet look dead, I’d say,’ Rhodey remarked. He nodded to Sharee before turning to his best friend. ‘You’re right. Tony, you did save the world back then.’

‘Guess I did,’ Tony mused. ‘And I didn’t even realise it.’

Sharee smiled. ‘More than that. You saved the world without throwing a single punch.’

Tony gave her a wry smile. ‘Well, punching them wouldn’t have helped.’

‘Exactly.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This just came into my head.
> 
> The first part was just a lead-in so that Sharee could tell Tony about how he unknowingly saved the world.
> 
> Additional note: The third guy at the start is Kolya.


	2. The Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony meets the Biker Mice from Mars, albeit briefly.

Natasha ground her teeth.

They’d had this perfectly in hand, thank you very much. She wasn’t sure what kind of experiments had been done to make these short humanoid mice, but then Tony had his Iron Legion storm in and not only force everyone away from them, but also hold their weapons out at the men in possession of the mutant mice.

Then Tony walked in, sunglasses in place and a cocky swagger.

The very sight of him annoyed her. Tony had not only turned his back entirely on the Avengers but on S.H.I.E.L.D. too when the President began running over every intelligence agency in the country – including S.H.I.E.L.D. And trying to hack into his systems, like they’d done before, had resulted in a virus chomping its way through S.H.I.E.L.D.’s entire database which took days to fix. The World Security Council had then been forcibly disbanded. Of course, then came the worst blow of all...

Tony looked at her and cocked an eyebrow. ‘What are you doing here?’

Natasha glared at him. ‘You think you can just disband S.H.I.E.L.D.?’ she demanded.

‘I didn’t,’ Stark said. ‘The President did. Keeping on going just makes you a terrorist organisation. You have no legitimate authority.’ That said, he turned away, dismissing her. He, instead, turned to the men and walked right over to them. Tony’s nostrils flared as he walked over to them. The mutant mice watched in something like childlike curiosity.

Tony then reached over, took the nose of one of the men between his thumb and forefinger and pulled. Natasha was shocked to see the man’s entire face come off. _A mask?_ How had Tony known? But that question was thrown off by what was underneath the mask. The face was blue, scaly and she swore there were gills on the man’s neck.

‘What are you doing back here?’ Tony asked coldly. ‘Didn’t I get rid of you once?’

One of the mice stood up – a mouse with tan fur and, oddly, shoulder-length black hair. ‘Are you Tony Stark?’

‘Yes, I am,’ Tony said, turning his head slightly. ‘Heard of me?’

The mice all stared displaying signs of relief as the first one nodded. ‘Yeah. Well, you forced the stink-fish off your planet before they actually managed to do any real damage. That’s what papa says.’

And Natasha was officially confused. When was this? She’d think she’d notice Tony Stark, of all people, kicking aliens off the planet. He would’ve made a huge production about it. This was Tony, after all! In fact, the unmasked alien ground his teeth at Tony – his very sharp teeth that’d look more in place in a predator’s mouth.

Tony turned back to him. ‘I was under the impression that you people had been kicked out of these parts entirely.’

‘They’re trying to force their way back in,’ the only mouse that’d spoken spoke again. ‘We’re the kids of several core members of the Martian Resistance Movement.’

‘Ah,’ Tony said. ‘The old do-as-we-say-or-the-kids-get-it ploy. Well, I may not have used weapons last time, and you might take care to remember that, but I can if you force my hand.’ He clicked.

Natasha was suddenly hauled out of the room with the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

***

Pepper knew that Tony had been preparing for the inevitable first contact with the Martians.

However, she hadn’t know his negotiations with NASA – which he’d started up to nudge them to the appropriate conclusion – had resulted in the creation of a small shuttle. A shuttle which the group of Plutarkians were secured into before JARVIS installed a message for the Martians, and then sent off to Mars.

‘What’s the message?’ Rhodey asked him as they stood watching it go.

‘Oh, just telling them who sent the Plutarkians and where the children are.’ Tony folded his arms. ‘From the data we got from the Plutarkians computers the Martian government was overthrown by the military, and convicted of treason. There’s a sort of elected committee in charge of the planet now. The message will be delivered straight to them as soon as it’s in range.’

Pepper was initially surprised to realise that they didn’t elect their government officials before, but then she realised that was kind of obvious. Even on Earth, not every country practiced democracy. She didn’t know the exact figure (Tony probably did), but there were quite a few countries that did not practice the system of government that she was born into. On top of that, if the Martian government could put the good of their citizens on the backburner just to line their pockets, it was obvious they had nothing to fear from voter backlash.  
It made Pepper curious, actually.

When they returned to the tower, they found Sharee in the living area that Tony had set aside for his guests. She’d volunteered to watch the kids while they sent the Plutarkians off with the message. Right now, they were all engrossed in a sitcom while Sharee sat across the room at the kitchenette with a mug of coffee.

‘Kids doing all right?’ Tony asked.

‘Yeah. I just found out that the one that talked to you is the oldest kid of Throttle and Carbine, which is hilarious. It’s like “do you have a death wish?”’ She chuckled to herself.  
Pepper smiled, guessing that those two must’ve been particularly active during the Martian-Plutarkian Wars. ‘I was actually surprised they’d heard of Tony. I mean, I understand here but that’s another planet.’

‘There’s a couple of reasons for that,’ Sharee said. ‘Firstly, the Martians noticed the Plutarkians withdrawing from Earth and, of course, sought out the reason. On top of that, they’d lost all of their own entertainment so they took to absorbing Earth media. So they had some clue as to who you were before you forced the Plutarkians out. Secondly, around the time you were doing that, three Martian Mice crash-landed in Chicago.’

‘And no one noticed?’ Rhodey asked. ‘I’d have expected S.H.I.E.L.D. to be all over that.’

‘And I’m sure they would have been,’ Sharee smirked, ‘if we Transcendents hadn’t diverted their attention elsewhere and covered it up. Helped that the Mice decided to keep a low profile and they had help from a human.’

‘So, they were actually here?’ Pepper asked. ‘For how long?’

‘Not too long. A few years. They left after the Plutarkians did. They decided not to leave the planet to the hands of the fish.’

‘Limburger.’ Tony clicked. ‘That’s why his tower kept falling down.’

‘Exactly. And that was another factor that drove them out: it became too expensive to keep building that damn tower. So the Mice knew who you were, and thought what you were doing was hilarious. And when they got home they told everybody else.’

Well, regardless, it answered her main question. ‘That also explains how they came into contact with the idea of democracy,’ Pepper remarked. ‘I was wondering about that.’

‘Yeah, they encountered it here on Earth.’ Sharee snorted. ‘You can imagine how appealing the idea of picking your own government was to the mice.’

‘You’ve met these guys?’ Rhodey asked.

‘No. If you remember, I was still a kid at the time, so I wasn’t really involved in the cover-up. I don’t think any of us actually approached them.’

Tony nodded. ‘And they’re probably the most likely to be sent down to get the kids.’

Sharee nodded. ‘That’d be my guess.’

***

Charley had been surprised to see the Biker Mice again, and even more surprised to hear why they’d returned to Earth.

Of course, she wasn’t surprised about Tony Stark’s intervention. She didn’t doubt that the man hadn’t known what the Plutarkians were when he drove them from the planet, but he probably did now. And with his resources, he was probably keeping an eye out for them. Hell, just the fact that he’d been upgrading the computer systems of NASA for looking at the surfaces of planets – particularly Mars – told her exactly what she needed to know.

‘Okay!’ Charley called over the roars of their bikes. ‘See that building there?’ She pointed up to the letters spelling out STARK.

‘That’s it?’ Throttle asked.

‘Stark Tower.’ Charley nodded. ‘Tony Stark’s New York residence is supposed to be right at the top.’

‘I think we ought to approach nicely this time, bros,’ Throttle said. ‘No going up the side of his building and breaking his windows.’

‘Yeah, it wouldn’t be a very nice way to say “thank you for saving the kids”,’ Modo remarked.

Charley rolled her eyes as the guys manoeuvred through the city.

They soon came to a stop in front of the tower. Charley was surprised to see a man with pale red hair waiting at the front doors. He opened his mouth and said something as he jerked his thumb up. Charley didn’t hear it, but the guys certainly did. Throttle shot him a salute and the three of them shot off – right up the side of the building.

‘Guys!’ Charley snapped.

‘What?’ Vinnie asked, looking a little too happy. ‘He said he was waiting at the top for us.’

So up they flew until they landed on the helicopter landing pad at the top – and there was Tony Stark.

He was taller in person than she was expecting, and a lot more casual. Jeans, an old band shirt, and trainers. Then again, he was an engineer who’d been raised in the limelight. He’d probably been raised to use a PC persona in public. At home, though, he’d be able to drop it. And he was, technically, home.

Honestly, Charley had not believed in his reputation since the 90s.

‘Oh, I like that,’ Tony said.

Throttle chuckled and pulled his helmet off. ‘You’re Tony Stark?’

‘That’s right,’ Tony said. He glanced at Charley, but that seemed to be more of an acknowledgement of her presence over anything else. ‘I guess you’re the guys that kept knocking down Limburger Plaza.’ His expression turned amused as he said that.

‘Oh, yeah,’ Vinnie said.

Modo threw his two cents in. ‘Good times.’

Throttle chuckled. ‘Well, you handled the hard bit.’

Tony nodded. ‘Didn’t even realise it at the time to be honest. Something just stunk about the whole thing.’ He paused. ‘No pun intended.’

Vinnie had a good little snigger.

Tony cracked a grin. ‘So, the kids are this way.’ He turned and led them into the building. The bikes were left where they were and the five of them got into the lift.

When it opened and they stepped out into a huge penthouse suite, though, Charley got the surprise of her life.

‘Papa!’

One of the mice children bolted across and right to Throttle, who quickly bent down and swept her into a tight hug.

They had _not_ mentioned that!

Although, Charley found her irritation fading as Throttle pulled back and brushed his daughter’s fringe out of her face. ‘You all right, Gyro?’

Gyro nodded. ‘Mr. Stark came in before they could actually hurt us, papa.’

At this point, the other children were rushing over too. Modo and Vinnie both checked them over, Modo crouching right down to their levels.

Eventually, Throttle turned to Tony, who’d moved over to the kitchenette. ‘So, how’d you move in so fast?’

It was only then that Charley noticed the other human in the room – a brunette woman somewhere in her late twenties or early thirties. Tony nodded to her. ‘Sharee and the guy who pointed you up here; they knew about Plutarkians. Once they told me, I had a catalogue made of all the tech those guys had used, and had my computer system flag any use of similar technology.’

Charley nodded. ‘So when they arrived back on Earth, you knew about it immediately.’

‘Pretty much.’ Tony frowned. ‘I thought they were taking another crack at our resources. I didn’t expect the kids.’

‘I get that,’ Modo said before looking at Sharee. ‘So how did you guys know?’

‘We’re part of a small group.’ Sharee took a drink of coffee. ‘Tale for another time, but one of us is a technopath. Quite a bit older than me, so when the message from Venus went out, he heard it – loud and clear.’

‘What?’ Vinnie asked in a half-laugh, sounding impressed. ‘He didn’t have to decode it? Cause Stoker did.’

‘Nah,’ Sharee said. ‘The technopathy does that for him. They might as well have looked him in the eye and just said it.’

Throttle looked over at Charley.

She sighed, knowing exactly what he wanted to know. Her constant exposure to those guys had taught her all their quirks and tendencies. And Throttle was the most logical of the three. This probably sounded a bit far-fetched to him. ‘Over the decades, more and more people have been gaining unusual abilities. Technopathy isn’t the strangest thing that’s happened to someone.’

‘True,’ Sharee said. ‘The weirdest thing was...’ She paused, looking thoughtful.

‘The Terror Twins?’ Tony suggested.

Sharee clicked and pointed to him in acknowledgement. ‘True, that. When siblings get powers, they’re generally similar. And that wasn’t the case with them.’

‘Who are the Terror Twins?’ Modo asked.

‘A set of twins who volunteered for illegal experimentation,’ Charley said. ‘I mean, the media reported on it but they didn’t get a heck of a lot.’

‘Yeah.’ Sharee rubbed the bridge of her nose. ‘The long and short of it is they came from a country embroiled in civil war. When they were ten, a bomb hit their apartment building, knocking the whole structure down, killing their parents, and trapping them inside. A second bomb landed within their view. It was probably a counterfeit because it said “Stark” on the side and it didn’t explode. Regardless, the twins decided this meant that Tony, here, had murdered their parents.’

Vinnie scoffed. ‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘I know, right!’ Sharee put down her coffee and threw her arms up in exasperation. ‘So, they keep this BS up and then, when they’re eighteen, they volunteer for these experiments by a terrorist organisation, all for the express purpose of killing Tony in some kind of revenge. They were the only survivors. The boy got super-speed and the girl got mental interfacing and telekinesis. I don’t know why they thought attacking the Avengers as a body would get Tony’s attention.’

‘Yeah, this is the part I know about.’ Charley nodded. ‘Tony only got involved when the girl set the Hulk loose on a blind rampage in the middle of a crowded city.’

‘What’s the Hulk?’ Throttle asked.

‘Let’s call him a physical embodiment of some breathtaking anger management issues,’ Tony said. ‘And the madder he gets, the stronger he gets.’

Sharee nodded. ‘We’ve even theorised that if he gets mad enough, he could punch the planet in half.’

‘Oh, mamma,’ Modo murmured. ‘A lot of people would’a gotten hurt in that.’

Sharee nodded her head. ‘To say the least.’

‘So once I calmed him down, I pulled him outta there,’ Tony said. ‘Then I built some power-suppression devices and slapped them on the twins.’ He nodded to Sharee. ‘Kolya’s another of them, but he can drain away artificial powers. I handed them over to him and he did his thing, then he took them into federal custody.’

Charley frowned. ‘That was when Steve Rogers kept claiming they were innocent, misguided kids, isn’t it? He kept saying you were responsible for their parents’ deaths?’

‘Yup,’ Tony said. ‘So, they came to the conclusion that the girl had been in his head and made him think that. He was taken into specialised care, and he’s been there ever since.’

Throttle scoffed. ‘Sounds like he needs it.’

Tony chuckled bitterly.

***

Tony had just seen the Biker Mice and the kids off when FRIDAY alerted him that she’d caught Former Director Fury trying to break in. Giving out a huff and checking his watch, Tony went down. Tony hadn’t timed it exactly, but the timing of the whole thing had fallen into some nice and convenient little timing.

He made a quick detour to change into some “battle armour” – or rather, a business suit.

‘Nicky, Nicky, Nicky!’ Tony practically sang as he stepped out of the elevator to the sight of Nick Fury being held down by one of his suits. ‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you how to enter someone’s home politely?’

‘Where are those mutant rats, Stark?’ Fury immediately demanded, despite the position he was in.

Tony clicked his tongue reprovingly. ‘They’d take exception to you calling them rats, Nicky. Their society doesn’t like that. They’re mice.’

‘What society?’ Fury demanded. ‘They’re just rodents that some aliens fucked around with!’

And Tony smirked. That was clearly the assumption that Romanoff had made. For all her talk of his ego, she certainly had one. Gyro recognising Tony, using the word “papa”, and saying how she’d heard of him should’ve been a dead giveaway. But she was determined to stick to her first conclusion – just adding the alien bit in for the Plutarkians.

Tony checked his watch again. ‘FRIDAY? Put on the report, will you?’

A holographic screen appeared between them and it immediately flashed onto the station broadcasting the Breaking News Report.

_‘There are very clear signs of construction taking place on the surface of Mars,’_ the reporter said. _‘Several experts have been consulted and all are stumped. However, NASA believes that Tony Stark had prior knowledge of this habitation of Mars, as he was more focused on improving the ability to view the surface of the planet than on actually getting there. Tomorrow morning, Mr. Stark is scheduled for a press conference to explain precisely what is happening on the surface of the Red Planet.’_

‘Off,’ Tony said.

The screen vanished.

Fury’s jaw worked for a moment or so. ‘There are no Martians, Stark.’

‘There have always been Martians, Nicky,’ Tony said coldly. ‘And they’ve just come out of a war that devastated their planet and their population. And that’s what those mice were – Martians. Those fish aliens? They were the invaders that did the devastation. Kidnapping those kids was their last-ditch effort to get what’s left of Mars’s natural resources. And I’ll be damned if I let anyone near them before they recover from that.’

‘But they’re aliens!’

‘This is our first official contact, Nicky,’ Tony told him, ‘Plutarkians, notwithstanding. It has to be done right. And the three adults that came to get the kids – we already owe them a hell of a lot.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Nick demanded.

Tony’s eyes narrowed. ‘Let’s just say I’m not the only one who has put time and effort into protecting the Martians.’

***

The next evening, Pepper leaned back and watched various bits of news covering on the bombshell that Tony had dropped. It was quite difficult for quite a lot of people to swallow the idea that there had been Martians there the whole time. She could see why Tony had taken the time to warn the Biker Mice about what he was going to do.

Well, the Biker Mice hadn’t complained at all.  
Apparently, they’d heard enough about what humans did to those who were different, and how long it took for them to adjust to new concept, that they understood what Tony was trying to do.

Of course, some people were embracing the idea of life on the neighbouring planet.

Of course, the funniest thing was people trying to disprove life on Mars, only to fail miserably as NASA observed buildings grow into cities. On top of that there was a lot of witness testimony from Chicago, or from people who’d been living in Chicago when the Biker Mice had been there. They all reported having seen or been saved by them.

Then there was the fact on _how_ the Biker Mice had arrived.

They’d crash-landed.

Into a scoreboard.

During a baseball game.

So that was easily a few thousand people stepping forward and going “yeah, this actually happened”. A guy who’d been a hot dog vendor on that night found it particularly memorable because he’d nearly been mugged that night, only for one of the Biker Mice (Vinnie, judging by his description) to intervene and use a laser to disintegrate the mugger’s weapon. The fact that Vinnie had been, at the time, unfamiliar with a hot dog, had supported the idea that they weren’t from Earth.

Charley told her that all three guys had developed a taste for hot dogs when she met them.

Then there was anyone who’d ever been in Limburger’s employment, or any other Plutarkian’s employment. Limburger particularly became an undesirable job because the man constantly stank and the building kept collapsing. Although, Pepper noticed the statements that the Biker Mice would generally give a very clear warning that they were about to take the building down so everyone just stopped what they were doing and left.

All that is to say that as time went on it became more and more difficult to deny that there were people living on Mars.

And Pepper was more and more impressed with how Sharee’s friends had managed to conceal the presence of the Biker Mice from S.H.I.E.L.D. for so long.

Tony plonked down next to her.

‘Not happy?’ Pepper asked.

‘Nope.’ Tony kicked his feet up. ‘Apparently, it’s a lot harder to justify colonising Mars when they find out there’s already people there who are just recovering from a massive war. And enough people are pointing out everything wrong with it that NASA’s backed off from Mars colonisation for now. But their financial backers have got a real case of sour grapes.’

‘Well, that’s their problem,’ Pepper said. ‘You did the right thing, Tony.’

Tony sighed and slumped down. ‘I know. But it’s also gonna take humanity quite a while to realise that.’

Pepper smiled at him. ‘You can’t rush them.’ She flicked the channel. ‘But look at this. People are already standing up for them.’

_‘...and just because they’re not a life form we’re familiar with, it doesn’t stop them from being people,’_ one of the experts on the TV said. _‘And they’re people who’ve been through a horrible tragedy. They were attacked and their homes, their lives, and their society were all torn apart. We might not be able to help them, but we can give them the time they need to recover from the ordeal.’_

Tony sighed and rested his head on Pepper’s shoulder. ‘I guess that’s better start than these things usually get.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm ignoring the BMfM revival series because it basically looked like one massive arse-pull, with a collection of smaller arse-pulls contained within.


End file.
